


Dreaming

by Phoenixflames12



Category: Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: F/M, Rape/Non-con Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 05:37:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8878012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenixflames12/pseuds/Phoenixflames12
Summary: Claire and Jamie dream and find they cannot share each other's memories. A reworking of Jamie's nightmare from 'Dragonfly in Amber.'





	

**Author's Note:**

> My first Outlander fic!
> 
> All of Randall's dialogue belongs to Diana Gabaldon, not me.

Dreaming

 

The darkness is flecked with a cold, clear moonlight that flickers through the slashed window. The house seems to unravel itself beneath the bed, stretching itself like a satisfied cat before curling, contracting itself into sleep.

 

All should be well.

 

All had been well at the d’Arbanvilles; a dinner that had twinkled with candles and conversation that had flowed as well as the wine. A dinner that had tried and almost succeeded in soothing my fears about Jack Randall; had tried to ease the shivering, gaping pain that was easing itself into my heart regarding Frank.

 

_Frank._

_My husband._

_My husband whom I grieved as one dead, but in reality; this reality; was not alive._

_Would not be alive for another two hundred years._

_The thought, cold and stark and broken, had threaded its’ ice spiked fingers around my heart and refused to let me go._

_Frank._

 

_Frank who looked so very like Jack Randall; Jack Randall whose face, with its’ cold, dark eyes  had risen from the burn that I had stumbled upon, dazed with fear and misunderstanding, all those months ago, as if from a dream._

‘Mo duinne?’

 

Jamie’s voice is slurred and soft with sleep, rising tenderly from the blanket as I find myself curling back into him; pulling his warmth closer, wrapping myself in the smells of ink and woodsmoke and whiskey, as if the very action could save me from my memories and fall; finally, thankfully into a dreamless sleep.

 

It is maybe just as well that I cannot see what he dreams of.

* * *

 

_He’s falling, the world ripping itself in a sudden scream away from him._

_The world is black and close and suffocating and smells foul._

_It smells of urine, faeces and blood all mingled in the sweet, shocking stink of fear and he would gag if he had the energy._

_The sound of hoarse, rasping breaths, the unmistakable tinge of lavender water mingled with the silent, unbearable frustration of too-taut skin as he lay there; unable to move for fear of his captor’s displeasure._

_The tramp of boots against a flagstone floor slick with water, the breath hot and fetid against his cheek._

_He cannot move and oh, how he wants to!_

_How he wants to sock that bloody bastard, Black Jack Randall, captain of the King’s 12 th Dragoon regiment across the face and try for his escape, futile though it would be!_

_How futile it would be to escape because the woman he would escape to, the woman he loves, the woman he adores, with bone and body and blood, is lost to him. Lost in a time that he can never hope to enter, a time unknown…_

_‘Sassenach… Bone of my body... Mo duinne… Brown haired lass… Claire…’_

 

_He cannot stop the tears from pricking as the words, those beautiful words of a time that had been as fleeting as an autumn sunset sinking across the tops of the hills back at Lallybroch, chatter silently against his teeth._

‘Jamie... Jamie… Wake up, it’s just a dream…’

 

_He can hear the words, but he cannot answer them, cannot understand them, for they come from a time that he cannot understand._

_And still the shadow of Jonathon Randall stalks the room and he cannot look at him._

_Cannot give him the satisfaction of his fear._

_‘Oh, we’ve got some time yet before they hang you, my boy,’ he heard being whispered silkily into the darkness. ‘Plenty of time to enjoy it.’_

_A sudden, hard movement from behind, a shock of sudden pain and a roar of fear breaking against his lips._

‘Jamie… Come back to me my love…’

 

_Hot breath infused with lavender water drips across him and he twists away, desperately trying to escape it, but it follows him, stalks him back into submission, breathing words that he cannot forget._

_‘Have you ever seen a man hanged, Fraser?’_

_The long, slim hand with its’ worn fingers, calloused from years of cupping a bayonet, of groping breasts, of Jenny’s breast, (he cannot think of that, but the image comes anyway and with it, another gasp of pain, dear God Jenny, how could she ever forgive him?), cupping itself around his waist._

_His eyes slide themselves firmly shut at that, spine taut, brain willing body not to give in, not to give his tormentor the satisfaction of his sudden weakness._

_The hand is gripping him, rubbing him, stroking him, lightly, firmly, teasing its way lower, still lower…_

_The voice does not wait for a reply._

‘Jamie, please, you’re frightening me!’

 

‘I canna help it, Claire…’ Every breath is an effort, his tongue feeling too heavy for his mouth, forcing itself around the words.

 

‘ _Yes, of course you have, you were in France, you’ll have seen deserters hanged now and then.’_

_‘That will happen to you, Fraser. Just a few more hours, and you’ll feel the noose.’_

_A short, barking laugh, dripping with pleasure._

_‘Fuck you. Fuck you Jack Randall and may you burn in Hell,’ every word is breathed into a pillow that reeks of excrement and sweat. Of blood and bodily fluids, of death, whenever it may come._

_Oh sweet Maria… ave maria…  gracia plena…_

_Not that, you bastard!_

_‘You’ll go to your death with your arse burning from my pleasure, and when you lose your bowels, it will be my spunk running down your legs and dripping on the ground below the gallows.’_

_He cannot answer, because answering would prove the bastard right, prove that the smells of animal and fetid, silent fear were one and the same as the torture begins again…_

‘Jamie, let me in. Please…’

 

_And suddenly the dream is fading, Randall’s jeers becoming fainter as he is pulled up, like a sailor from the depths of some deep, dark ocean._

_Pulled up, gasping and spluttering and shaking violently into an embrace that he cannot return._

 

The eyes when they finally, finally crack open, look straight past me; the face that I had come to know and love so well gaunt in the moonlight, his expression carrying all the lines of a hunted beast that finds itself trapped and cannot resign itself to its fate.

 

‘Jamie?’ Tentatively, I feel myself reach for his arm; every muscle hard as stone in the moonlight; a hard, unknown energy that frightened me slightly rippling through him.

 

‘I’m alright. I’m awake.’ His voice is caught but steady, so different from the pleading helpless cries of my name that had crossed his lips just moments before.

 

‘What was it? A dream? A nightmare?’ I had asked the same question so many times whilst sitting with wounded soldiers at the front; their dreams scarred from wire and shellfire and gas.

 

He nods, slowly; eyes still distant; blurred with memories that I had no access to.

 

‘Aye, a dream… Just a dream, Sassenach…’ His voice falters, but I find that I cannot press him. Not yet.

 

‘Tell me? Talk to me, it will help it go away, ‘I told him quietly; our gazes locked, his grip on my forearms almost unbearable.

 

‘No..’ His voice is dazed, still lost in silent pleas and screams, his body tense and quivering beneath my touch.

 

‘No, I canna. I canna… I willna use you that way, lassie.’ Every word is one of forced, desperate calmness that contrasts starkly with the desperation still locked within his gaze.

 

‘You shalna be part of it,’ he says after a beat of silence, turning his face away from me, towards the window. Towards the silver pool of moonlight shimmering on the floor, towards the light and air that he had been denied so cruelly in Wentworth Prison.

 

A long, shuddering, calming breath and he turns back to me; face blank, the lines and memories that had risen behind his eyes quietly locked away.

 

‘Get ye to bed, lassie,’ he says finally, pushing himself against the headboard, so that the bed creaks against his weight.

 

‘It was only a dream, Jamie’, I say finally; a reassurance entering my voice that I did not feel entirely.

 

‘Jack Randall is dead. He’s dead, he cannot come and find you. Not here, not while I’m with you, I promise.’

 

* * *

_**Fin** _

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to read and review! 
> 
> Comments, suggestions, constructive criticism etc are like chocolate to my brain.
> 
> Much love and enjoy x


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